Spinning on a Wheel

Today I took a class on Spinning on a Spinning Wheel. OMG what fun!!! It was from 10:00 to 3:30pm and when I signed up I thought, 5 1/2 hours, no way. It was all of a sudden 3pm and I didn't even feel like an hour had gone by!

Let my preface this by explaining that I have spun on a drop spindle, and am getting quite good at it.


So I have experience spinning and drafting.

But I usually spin, processed, prepared roving. Today we spun in the grease. Which I admire and enjoyed the experience, but will never, EVER do again.


For those of you that don't know, spinning in the grease means right off the sheep, dirty and full of lanolin.

We started with carding, which I had done before in the drop spindling class. With previous experience that went quite well.

Then we began spinning on the wheel. It was much the same as beginning spindling, messy, thick and thin yarn, breaking the yarn, tangling mess. We were learning on the Louet S10.


A nice wheel, but I wasn't keen on the solid wheel structure or the single treadle. My back began to ache. I have back problems anyway, so I was starting to think maybe getting a spinning wheel wasn't such a good idea.

Later we got to try various wheels. I chose the Ashford Traveller to try. Its such a pretty thing.


Double treadle, oh wow!! Solved the aching back. Spinning just became so much easier.

Then I tried the Lady Bug.


Also a very nice wheel.

Now I was torn. I thought the Traveller was the one. However, after much deliberation, I think the Traveller is the one. Its much more quaint and lovely than the Lady Bug. They both work wonderfully, but aesthetically the Traveller is much more pleasing to my eye.


During class I thought, oh what a lovely caramel colored fleece (see raw fleece above). After washing I found that, nope, its white ... again did I mention dirty and right off the sheep!?!?!


I thought the woman teaching the class looked familiar then I figured it out, I had been to her farm before!

So I am pretty sure tomorrow I will be going back to the yarn shop to pick up an Ashford Traveller!